


polars

by afellowofyellow



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: - he's also closeted, - kind of, - not really though (it's more a fear of being judged), Alternate Universe - High School, High School Students NCT Dream, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mark Lee (NCT) is Whipped, Mark Lee (NCT)-centric, NCT Dream Ensemble-centric, Underage Drinking, based loosely off polaris from skam france, may have more characters but idek yet, was supposed to be a one shot but nah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24970921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afellowofyellow/pseuds/afellowofyellow
Summary: "they were both afraid of each other's world""they will see each other if one of them overcomes his fear and dares to go into the world of the other one"or// Mark is hiding his feelings from everyone while Donghyuck is just curious why he keeps staring
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 15
Kudos: 85





	1. mustard

**Author's Note:**

> skam is one of my favorite shows and I love the idea behind Polaris in the French version >_< so I borrowed (read: stole) it..

Mark was scared.

Of what – he wasn’t sure. Maybe he was scared of Donghyuck’s world – of the confidence the boy held toward himself, his buoyant laughter floating above the trickling conversation the cafeteria held. Or maybe he was more so scared of the feelings he hid – of the twisting fist over his gut when the boy’s bright grin pointed toward him. Maybe he was scared of being found out.

No matter whatever fears Mark held, sitting at the table just adjacent to the culprit who sent his nerves cascading down in tremors was never a good idea.

Mark slanted an eye to the boy a few seats down, fiddling with the fabric of his lunch pack. The box was cool against his hands from where he’d dropped an icepack in the side zipper and he felt it ebb some of the apprehension in them. Donghyuck was surrounded with his friends, giddy laughter spilling over his heart shaped grin and Mark flicked his eyes away anxiously, surveying the other’s positions in line as he waited impatiently. Mark spotted Yukhei’s towering form inching forward.

The tawny haired boy pulled a sandwich from his bag, wincing at the squish of the cold bread between his fingertips. He bit in with a grimace toward the sogginess. Laughter flitted through the air continuously. Mark slanted his eyes to his peripherals.

Donghyuck clung to the boy beside him – Mark knew him as Jaemin from his Music Theory class – with a petulant pout, his cheek squished into the boy’s shoulder. Mark surveyed the coppery strands of hair that were splayed over Donghyuck’s cheek, contrasting the remaining tan of the summer prior that seemed to paint him in a constant golden haze. He grinned with mischief and Mark tore his eyes away once more to pick at the crust of his sandwich, guilt pooling in his gut with his stare.

Crumbs fell onto the beeswax wrap he’d had the food folded in – his mother having gone on a plastic waste prevention rampage to save money (and the environment) before the school year had properly begun – and set his sandwich down, swiping the back of his wrist against his mouth. Mark pulled the top layer of bread from the stack, a frown playing over the corners of his lips as he glanced over it.

The one flaw, Mark found, to having a mother who offered to build his lunches was her inability to remember what food, and particularly condiments, he would eat. Mark hated mustard. And it seemed his mother was dead set on using it every day. He pulled the paper napkin – a necessity his mother hadn’t been able to give up in favor of savings – from his lunch and frowned at its similar coldness to the sandwich. Mark swiped it over crust with a grimace. The white of the napkin smeared with yellow.

“Why don’t you just make your own sandwiches?”

Mark jumped slightly, flicking his eyes up as Yukhei settled onto the seat just before him. The plastic of his tray clinked slightly and Mark shrugged. He flicked an eye discreetly to his right, shielding his mustard soiled napkin and open sandwich out of embarrassment. Donghyuck remained preoccupied with his friends, no cares directed toward the boy.

“I wake up too late,” Mark flipped the dejected food over, checking the other slice for more of the vetoed spread. He found mayonnaise instead and shrugged, closing it once more and lifting it to his mouth.

“Explains why you look how you do every day.”

Mark balked, squinting a glare toward the elder boy and scrunching his nose with distaste. “No, I wake up too late to make my _lunch_. I never said anything about not making myself look decent.”

Yukhei snorted and Mark watched as he scraped the food from his plate with a soft clink. He dropped the fork with a clang and Mark flinched, slipping his jaw into his palm to turn slightly away from the crowd of boys seated beside him, before Yukhei leaned further over the table with a lopsided grin. Mark raised his eyebrows. “What does that say about your appearance then – if you have time to fix yourself up in the morning and still look like _that_?” he gestured to Mark.

Mark scowled, reaching a hand forward and flicked the boy between his brows. They knit together and he drew back suddenly, rubbing the afflicted area with peevishness. A body dropped beside Mark and he turned, leaning slightly away from the boy.

“What’d he do?” Renjun probed.

“Why is it always assumed I did something?” Yukhei loud voice whined and Mark scowled, resisting the urge to turn and assure himself that no one was – or rather someone wasn’t – paying attention to the group.

“He said I look bad every day.”

Renjun shrugged, pulling the granola bar from his teeth and speaking around the mouthful. “I mean, where’s the lie?” Renjun’s tone was questioning and Mark’s scowl deepened as the pair lifted their hands into a mocking fist bump.

Mark shoved his half eaten sandwich back into the wrap and placed it into his lunchbox, shoveling around to grapple with the other food there. He pulled out a dish of watermelon. Mark mumbled to himself and popped the Tupperware lid off. Renjun snorted beside him.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

Mark raised his eyebrows, turning to Renjun’s smirk. “At least I’m not a midget.”

“Right, because being an inch taller than him gives you a _real_ advantage,” Yukhei piped in, an eyebrow quirking to the pouting boy as he straightened his back to tower over the table. Mark grimaced with a roll of his eyes.

“It’s something.”

Renjun snatched a piece of the cubed fruit and dodged the onslaught of Mark’s swats toward the thieving hands. “Really something to be proud of,” he mumbled sarcastically around the melon with a grin. Mark scowled at the mess in his mouth.

Mark peered toward the vibrant head of hair briefly, his eyes drifting to the pull of Donghyuck’s pout as he leaned closer across the table to his company. His dark eyes were squinted with mirth and Mark resisted the urge to smile with the pretty boy’s expression of whine. He turned away quickly with the warming of his stomach and glanced over the two boys beside him, nervously surveying where their gazes lay. Neither was focused on him.

With assurance, he turned back toward the bright boy that seemed to shout for all the attention in the room. Mark was captivated.

Mark had been captivated by Donghyuck since the boy had first dropped onto the seat beside him in their Biology class; he’d hummed a tune below his breath and tipped his head back to hang limply over the chair. The two had barely exchanged words since, working as seatmates for assignments and labs before their mumbled chatter dissolved into silence. Mark wasn’t sure if their lack of interaction made him grateful or spiteful.

Mark continued to watch as the boy’s sentence softened into a fit of giggles and he felt his mouth tilt slightly, his lips pulling into a small smile. The crease of Donghyuck’s eyes deepened with his laughter, his heart shaped smile wide and his mouth ajar with the shake of his shoulders. Mark watched him glow with the sun’s vibrancy.

The boy with tangerine hair sobered slightly, his nose scrunching with joy as he shook his head to the classmates that surrounded him and Mark suppressed the spark of jealousy that twisted his gut. He’d never deserved one of those grins but he felt himself wishing for one – wishing he could earn one.

His mouth straightened flat and he tilted his chin down, flicking his eyes to his lap and scratching his forearm harshly with thought. He flitted his eyes upward once more before freezing. His eyes widened.

A familiar pair of dark eyes stared back at him; heart shaped lips twisted into a soft smirk to accompany the quirk of his eyebrow. Mark scurried his gaze away, settling it over the paper Renjun’s finger rapidly scampered over as he spoke with Yukhei. Mark furrowed his brows at the equations, his temples burning as he could feel the boy’s gaze remained trained over him.

Posies bloomed over Mark’s cheeks and he felt the flush climb over his neck to dust the tips his ears. He lifted a hand to tug over the left one, working to rub away the apprehension that painted it rosy. His head dizzied and he exhaled heavily, his chest hammering as he’d been caught.

“Hey, Mark.”

Mark’s voice caught in his throat and his gaze shot back toward Donghyuck’s, the boy’s grin greeting him in a way that made his stomach dance uncomfortably. He hummed in nervous response, his hands tremoring for fear of his well-hidden truth being ousted.

“Could I have a watermelon?” Mark’s eyebrows shot up and he stared down accusatorily to the fruit, their vivid red holding a sudden unwelcome flirtatiousness. Mark lifted a hand and pointed an appendage to the Tupperware in question. Donghyuck’s guffaw returned and he squinted joyously to the silent elder. “Yes, that watermelon, Mark.”

With a suddenly shaky hand, Mark seized the dish and thrust it toward Donghyuck, holding it as still as possible across the table as the boy reached a hand forward. Donghyuck plucked a cube from the box and thrust it into mouth, grinning around the fruit. Mark swallowed harshly and pulled away, hastily wrenching his eyes from the boy’s wetted mouth. He was met with Yukhei’s raised eyebrows.

“Since when did you give away your watermelon?”

“Since when did you get flustered when boys flirted with you?”

Mark blanched and danced his eyes between his two friends. “I’m not flustered,” he chose to answer first.

“Right,” Renjun drawled and Mark scowled.

“And why’s he special that he gets watermelon?” Yukhei prompted once more, his brow lifting in scrutiny.

“I’m not close enough to say no – it’d be awkward,” he shrugged in feigned nonchalance, his practiced ease still rather shaky.

Yukhei and Renjun remained silent a moment, studying their friend in confusion and Mark swallowed, rolling his eyes toward them apprehensively. He cast his eyes behind Yukhei’s shoulder to distract himself from the heated gazes placed over him. His flush deepened with nerves.

Yukhei spoke up, “He’s in your class, isn’t he? That’s not strangers.”

“But it’s not close,” Mark spoke with exasperation – what seemed to be pointed toward their interrogation truly prompted by the fear of his transparency. “I’d just feel awkward refusing him when it’d come off as rude.”

“Doubtful but I don’t really care,” Renjun said, scoffing and turning back to the papers he’d scattered over the table. “I still need help on all this and it’s too much work to think about you being flustered right now.”

Mark rolled his eyes, tugging on his ear. “I wasn’t flustered.”

“You turned red.”

“Because I didn’t know what to say.”

Yukhei grinned, “Alright.”

Mark rolled his eyes and pulled his own piece of watermelon from the container, chewing on the fruit and casting his eyes downward to the table, and then toward the sheets Renjun had spread, and then to the table. He jumped slightly as a golden hand reached over his shoulder and into the Tupperware, hastily whipping his head around.

Donghyuck grinned from behind him, sliding the fruit into his mouth and backing away.

✁---

Mark swallowed harshly, parting his lips slightly to gulp shallow breaths whilst he kept his nose clogged. He pushed through the congested room with a sigh; his eyes pointed to the ceiling and he flinched away to avoid the inevitable brush of hands against his thigh. He inhaled through his nose.

The room smelled of a peculiar mix of locker rooms and sea brine, the strong scent of deodorizers and cologne mingling with the slick sweat that dripped over the nape of each neck. It was dark; dim lights flickering through the large living room turned dance floor and a bass thumping tune filtering deafeningly through the walls of the house.

Mark had never been there – he’d never been even near the neighborhood – and he couldn’t bring himself to care whose _there_ it was. The house was large, the kitchen cluttered with empty and unopened alcohol, and whoever owned the house knew what they’d be getting themselves into when they threw the party. Thus, Mark didn’t pick up the crunched can he kicked below his feet.

He tapped the inside of his foot against the makeshift ball and kicked it continuously between the erratic feet of the strangers and classmates surrounding him. He’d tripped a few of the haphazardly dancing – if that was what they were aiming for – students and muttered apologies to the uncaring and oblivious intoxicated teenagers. They seemed to be used to tripping.

Mark wasn’t sure what was enjoyable about the mobbed room, the smell of heady alcohol and the cling of smoke that filtered below shut bathroom doors smothering as he pushed toward the edge of the crowd. His stomach was warm with the drinks that sat in his gut and he grimaced at the feel, his head pounding with the dehydration that accompanied the drinks he’d downed.

Mark pulled the thin cotton of his shirt from where it clung to him, sweat stickying his skin in the hot room. He pushed his jacket off his shoulders, basking in the slight cool that accompanied the removal of the extra layer. He pulled it back on properly, not trusting himself to hold it. Reaching the edge of the crowd, Mark hurried through the newly opened doorway, finding it to suddenly open into a tall foyer.

He stepped fully into the area, the newly sparse population greeting him with a temperature that plummeted suddenly from the constraints of the living room. He slumped against a wall and pulled his jacket down once more.

“Mark Lee,” he looked up with the familiar voice.

“Wong Kunhang.”

The dark haired boy stumbled slightly forward, a grin plastered over his mouth as he clung to Yukhei. Mark raised his eyebrows and laughed. “You alright?” he said.

The boy nodded rapidly as he neared, Yukhei studying him with his brows knit together as he gripped his forearms to steady his stumble forward. Mark had known Hendery since junior high, the two having been in the same advanced math placement, and Yukhei had been attached to the hip of the boy before even then.

Hendery hummed before he said, “The kitchen smells like Rum and Horchata; it’s nice.”

Mark raised his eyebrows and released a soft laugh. “I believe that’s called cinnamon and nuts to nonalcoholics.”

Yukhei shook his head with a smile toward Mark. “Technically it probably is Horchata and Rum since we're, well, _here_... so – he’s not wrong.”

Hendery nodded unsteadily once more and tipped forward. Yukhei grabbed his forearm to yank him upward, the boy resolving into a fit of giggles. Mark watched his long hair slip over his eyes, the boy tipping his chin to his chest as he swayed slightly. Yukhei grimaced down toward him.

“How long have you been here?” Hendery asked with his regained balance. His eyes were glossy in the dim light of the room and his words slurred. Mark nearly laughed aloud as he met Yukhei’s eye, the corners of his mouth turned deeply downward.

Mark wasn’t sure how long he’d been at the party – let alone how long he’d been wandering without looking for any of his friends. He’d dulled his thoughts with the burn of alcohol when he’d first arrived and then proceeded to wander aimlessly through the crowds – never _looking_ to find his friends. The distraction of the blasted can that lay at his feet burned the backs of his eyes guiltily.

Mark shrugged. “Not too long.”

Mark wasn’t sure what he disliked of the parties his friends convinced him to attend. They were all examples of teen filth – drinking until sick and dancing until sick and doing God knows what until sick – but he found that he couldn’t bring himself to dislike or even shed a simple care for such. He just… didn’t like parties. And he knew he wasn’t forced to attend them – that it was doubtful that not being seen amongst a sea of sweaty bodies and groping would make anyone think you lesser. And yet – Mark still forced himself to show. And still Mark was miserable each time.

Hendery nodded, this time slower. “Having fun?”

Mark hummed, mimicking the black haired boy’s slow nod. “Yeah, it’s cool,” he fibbed. It wasn’t that Mark wanted to lie to his friends, or that he wanted his friends to think he enjoyed their ‘scene’, he just didn’t want them to see him any different. He didn’t want to be judged.

And so Mark told them he liked whatever they liked.

Hendery grinned, bouncing on his toes slightly before teetering into Yukhei. The elder boy grappled for a firm hold over him before sighing.

“I’d say it’s about time we force water into you,” he directed toward the younger under his breath, tucking his arm under the boy’s shoulders. Yukhei lifted a hand in dismissal to Mark and backed away, disappearing down a hallway and being engulfed by a heat of bodies. Mark looked to the front door.

It was pulled shut but Mark could see the cover of night through the tall windows. He pushed the door open and stepped through its frame, inhaling deeply as the bare skin of his neck came into contact with the crisp air of mid-October. Mark gulped the fresh air down to wash away the musk that drenched him from the heated air of the large house. It burnt his nose in its soothing temperature.

Mark bounded down the few steps of the porch before he dropped down, bending his elbows across his kneecaps. He tilted his head back and watched the clouds move over the blackened sky. They appeared a blue in the blanketing night, eclipsing the moon and starlight. Mark squinted through the tufts of blue to the few stars that peered through each break of clouds.

A sudden warmth enveloped his right side and Mark turned his head to study the body that dropped beside him. Skin of gold and orange hair greeted him. Donghyuck had his head tilted back as Mark’s had been moments prior, his dark eyes studying the mundane sky. Mark sat frozen.

An eye slanted to meet Mark’s wide gaze though Donghyuck’s chin remained pointed to the clouds. He quirked a brow to the boy.

“Hi?”

Donghyuck flicked his eyes back to the miniscule stars, ignoring the pleasantry. “I’m afraid the only sandwiches here have mustard.”

Mark scrunched his nose with the boy's words and tilted his head in confusion. “What?”

“You don’t like mustard. And I ate a sandwich and it had mustard.”

Mark nodded slowly, his brow still knit with confusion. Donghyuck settled him with a blank stare. “How’d you even know that?”

Donghyuck smirked. “You scrape it off all your sandwiches. I thought I’d warn you.”

Mark nose scrunched further. “Why do you know I scrape it off my sandwiches?”

Donghyuck raised his eyebrows, amusement flickering over his gaze. Mark was struck by the way he glittered in the dark, the orangey glow of the porch lights glinting off him. A smudge of dark, shimmery shadow smeared over the lids of his eyes, his eyelashes painted darker than what Mark had grown accustomed. His coppery skin dripped like honey in the dark and Mark swallowed harshly, ignoring the bronze hair that shone similarly.

"If you're allowed to stare so am I." Mark felt a flush burn over his cheekbones, staining his face red. “There’s no watermelon either,” Donghyuck continued, turning back to gaze at the horizon. Mark fidgeted with his hands over his knees.

“Alright.”

Donghyuck hummed.

Mark’s stomach seemed to have joined the steaming mass of jumbled limbs and messy hopping that filled the house, twisting and sending a nauseating tremor through him. The boy beside him was warm like the bodies of the house, his cheeks tinted red with the consumption of alcohol, and he seemed slick with sweat. Mark wondered if he was the type to dance.

Mark wondered if Donghyuck’s body glided smooth over the living room dancefloor, his movements all hips and wandering hands, or if he moved alongside the chaotic mess of gropes and jumping. His fingers twitched with a sudden urge to pull and twist the thin shirt of boy beside him. He clenched them into fists.

The silence that enveloped them heightened the thud of Mark’s heartbeat slamming into his chest and he found himself entranced by the sporadic and hasty rhythm. He wondered if the boy beside him could hear his nerves – if he could feel each pulse that wracked his frame harshly. Mark gulped, exhaling slowly to calm the apprehension of his body and the whirring of his dizzied mind.

Donghyuck shifted beside him, the warmth of the boy’s body seeming to increase as his arm began to press further into Mark’s own. His heart skipped a beat.

“Do you know which is better?”

Mark startled slightly as the boy spoke up, his voice breaking the hypnosis his heartbeat had pushed. Mark flicked his eyes to where the boy’s two hands held something – or two somethings. Mark studied the two granola bars, his eyes catching on the familiar wrapper of his favorite. He gestured to it with his pinkie.

“I like that one, it’s my favorite.”

Donghyuck hummed, turning his head to study the elder boy. He nodded his head once. “Alright, it’s a good thing I asked so I could give it to you then.”

Mark furrowed his brows as the boy lifted the hand that held the bar, reaching it forward to offer to him. He shook his head slightly, opening his mouth to refute before Donghyuck lifted a brow. Mark grabbed the snack from the boy’s outstretched hand tentatively, cupping it in his own lap. Donghyuck began to unwrap his own; the wrapper crinkling as he gingerly tore it from the sticky granola.

Mark squinted to the coppery haired boy, splitting the foil of his own bar and pulling it down. Donghyuck lifted the bar to his mouth, biting down and Mark jumped as he realized where his eyes had been trained, tearing them away from the boy’s lips to study the snack he opened. Donghyuck giggled beside him.

“How do you like the party?”

Mark shrugged, taking his own mouthful of the bar and glaring into the bulb of the porchlight. “I’m not much of a… party lover,” he glanced to the boy beside him, finding Donghyuck already studying him.

“Don’t you go to most?”

Mark continued to shrug, scrunching his mouth to the side in contemplation. “Yeah.”

“And yet, you don’t like them?”

Mark wasn’t sure why he was being honest – he never had been with any of his friends – but he let his mouth continue to slip, his shoulders continue to shrug. Donghyuck remained silent as Mark met his gaze in a hesitant stare, the question hanging between them. Mark tore his eyes away, mulling over the granola bar that crumbled in his lap.

“Not really. I sort of just show up and leave.”

Donghyuck hummed. His eyes never left Mark as he stood, brushing the crumbs from his thighs and letting his hands drop. Mark forced his eyes to remain trained away from the pair of legs just before his line of sight. He swallowed harshly to ignore the bile that pushed his voice hoarser.

“That sounds a bit disappointing.”

✁---


	2. watermelon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some awkward exchanges

✁---

Mark didn’t know how he kept getting himself in these situations.

The lunchroom was bustling, that much was usual, and Mark sat across from Renjun. The boy had his pencil case spilled over the table, a few falling to clatter and roll across the dirtied floor with each slight nudge against them. Mark winced as he stooped over to continuously pick them up. Yukhei sat beside him, his shoulder nudging him with each shift to shovel food into his mouth.

He’d been watching the edge of the cafeteria continuously, his hands haphazardly clenching over the crackers in his bag until they cracked and crumbled. His eyes flitted expectantly over the table beside his. The seat beside Jaemin’s remained empty.

Mark knew it wasn’t unusual that the boy would skip over school days – or even just disappear from certain periods; whether lunch was one such period, he wasn’t sure – but he couldn’t help the strange longing that filtered through his chest with his absence. It was a feeling that scared him, one that risked the exposure of his secrets, and he itched to run.

Mark had gotten rather good at running – why he did so, he never let himself wonder.

He’d barely picked over his food throughout the entirety of the lunch hour; crushing crackers and simply discarding his mustard laden sandwich – he couldn’t bring himself to scrape it off with the discovery that people, _Donghyuck_ , noticed; and the two boys that sat beside him were beginning to notice. Yukhei lifted the container of melon from his lunchbox.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

Renjun snorted, not lifting his head from the work before him. “He’s saving it for a special someone.”

“Oh, shut up, Renjun,” Mark said, his words blurring together in self-defensive haste, “I’m not hungry today.”

Yukhei tilted his head, popping the Tupperware open. “Aren’t you the one that claims watermelon doesn’t fill you up? That you’ll eat it no matter what?”

Mark hummed. Yukhei rolled his eyes, plucking the red fruit from the container and grinning at Mark’s arched brow. He turned away, letting his eyes drift nearer the hallway once more before dropping them to rest over his lap when he found it still empty. Yukhei shifted beside him, jostling him in his seat and causing him to look up. The elder’s gaze was questioning.

“You sure you’re alright? Awfully expectant to the hallway – what’d it do to you?”

Mark let his eyes fall back into his lids in exasperation, a sneer littering his lips. “I’m _fine_ , Yukhei. _Fine_.”

The boy didn’t appear convinced. He turned back toward the youngest of the three to watch him scrawl across the homework and Mark began to tune them out, ignoring Yukhei’s scolding tone toward the boy’s constant decision to complete his homework moments before class. It didn’t matter to Mark – Renjun still managed to get honors anyway.

Mark cast his eyes to the unoccupied seat once more, his lips pulling to the side in a pout. Maybe Mark should’ve been glad – he’d never spoken more personal words to Donghyuck than ‘I’m going to the bathroom’ and he supposed he’d not know what to say to him when he did see him next. Knowing the sporadic boy, to Donghyuck nothing had changed. To Mark, he wasn’t sure how their newfound ability to maintain a conversation of _sorts_ affected him.

He was already practically incapable of remaining still the entirety of class, his body begging him to fidget with nerves at the younger’s proximity. Each brush of tanned, warm skin against his own sent shivers up his spine that had him itching to crawl away. With added conversation to further steal his attention toward the coppery boy, Mark couldn’t begin to imagine the painful hammering his chest would undertake in.

“Hey, Mark, right?” he flicked his eyes to the voice.

“Huh?”

Jaemin scooted across the bench, closer to Renjun who looked up with newfound interest. The boy grinned, his smile wide and holding a weird intensity that made it seem both blinding and intimidating. Mark resisted the urge to shrink into himself at his sudden approach.

“I’m Jaemin.”

Mark nodded, “I know.”

Jaemin nodded, his smile still there but his nose scrunching slightly with the raise of his eyebrows. Mark did shrink into himself then, his shoulders slumping inward almost ashamedly. “I was just wondering what’s so interesting over here.”

Mark furrowed his brows. “Huh?” he repeated.

Jaemin shrugged, his smile disappearing into a straight line of mock curiosity. “I was just wondering if there’s a problem – since you seem to really like our table.”

“I’m sorry?” Mark’s chest hammered, his hands pulling at the fabric of his jeans as he swallowed against the scratch of his throat. He could feel Renjun and Yukhei’s inquisitive gazes burning into his temple and his cheeks heated. He tugged against the lobe of his ear nervously.

In that moment, Mark was not calm – just as Mark hadn’t been calm the entirety day. He was in a constant state of unease – uneasy with the thought of a sunny boy and the way he collapsed his walls, uneasy with the confrontation of someone who seemed to know more about him than he did himself.

“Jaemin, I told you to leave it,” a voice piped up, tentative and directed solely to the boy that stared Mark down intensely. Mark’s eyes drew to the voice at its gentleness and he found a black haired boy staring to Jaemin’s cheek. The boy flicked his eyes to meet Mark’s gaze and he offered a pitiful smile, his eyes curving into crescent moons.

Mark turned back to the find the boy still staring heatedly to him and he flinched away, dropping his eyes to the lunch table. It was then that he saw their joint hands.

A flash of heat struck through Mark and his head dizzied, leaving him to sway slightly and grab onto the table edge. He felt almost jealous, his brain immediately flicking to a pair of lithe, ring-adorned fingers interlocking with his own pair – gold skin kissing ivory. Palms pressed flush together and singing with intimacy.

It was funny how, what Jaemin was most self-conscious of him judging was the exact thing Mark himself feared: his insatiable and utter want for a boy.

“I just want to know what’s so interesting.”

Mark tore his eyes to the boy’s, his gaze wide. He felt like a deer caught in headlights.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled, hastily, “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I was just kinda… stuck in my head,” Mark laughed nervously, continuing to pull on his earlobe as he felt it deepen to crimson. His neck itched with its burning flush. He hoped his voice hadn’t trembled as the pulse of his heart made it seem likely that it would have.

The thing was Mark had been stuck in his head. There was nothing tying Mark to consciousness, he was stuck in a dream-like state alongside the image of a boy drenched in crystalline glints and he’d had no intention of escaping his clutches. It was his way of running to what he wanted to be.

Jaemin’s brows shot upward slightly in surprise before he furrowed them in distrust. Mark flicked his eyes to Renjun’s. The boy screwed his brows together in question and the elder skirted his gaze away once more, his stomach twisting at the prospect of being caught staring – again. Jaemin continued to watch. He spoke up a moment later.

“Well if you do have a problem,” he lifted the joint hands, “feel free to express your stupidity.” Mark furrowed his brows momentarily before the insinuation dawned further on him.

“No,” he gasped out before he broke off into a nervous laugh.

“No?”

“No, I mean – that’s not a problem,” he laughed again, “I’m sorry you thought that. That’s fine – you do you, y’know. Not for me but-” he cut off his ranting with a shake of his head to himself. “I’m sorry you thought that. I just… well, stare… sometimes.”

Jaemin parted his lips in confusion before he laughed dryly. “That’s a bit creepy.”

Mark cringed to himself, scratching the side of his head. “It is, isn’t it?”

Jaemin raised his brows before nodding slowly. “Alright,” he slid back down the bench, turning his head away from Mark.

The anxiety in Mark’s gut didn’t quell with the retreat of the boy, the buzz of fear unmuted and roaring with the blood in his ears. Mark didn’t know what to make of their interaction – what to expect of its outcome – but he couldn’t find a scenario that was good. He couldn’t find a scenario where the outcome didn’t end in him as a liar.

Mark either revealed the truth he’d kept or assumed the title of being against them. He couldn’t bring himself to ponder what would be worse.

“I’m sorry, _what_?”

“Is that where you kept looking?”

“‘Not for me’? Classy response, Mark.”

“Do you _have_ a problem with it?”

“No, God, no,” Mark sighed, tugging his hands through his hair. He sighed, meeting Yukhei’s gaze. He shrank away as his gut twisted, the judgement in the boy’s stare knocking the wind from him. Mark set his elbows on the table and settled his forehead over them. “You’d think you’d know that I don’t.”

“Well, I don’t know, Mark. You’re the one who was allegedly glaring at them.”

“I wasn’t _glaring_ ,” Mark’s head shot up, a scowl twisting his mouth. Renjun raised his brows in expectation. “I was wondering where Donghyuck is,” he uttered.

Yukhei quirked a brow, “What’s _with_ you? Why does that matter now – you said you barely knew him?”

Mark shrugged, shaking his head as if to say ‘I don’t know’. “I’m just curious.”

Renjun squinted to the boy. “It’s Donghyuck, anyway. His disappearances aren’t exactly anything unusual by now.”

“Can we just leave it alone?” Mark’s voice was reduced to a whisper and he tipped his head back to glance to the cafeteria ceiling. “I don’t have a problem with them – I didn’t even _notice_. It’s not a big deal.”

Renjun shrugged, still watching Mark. “Clearly it was if Jaemin had to say something. The kid may not have a problem with confrontation but he’s still _nice_. But it’s whatever.” Renjun didn’t make it seem like it was ‘whatever’. Mark sighed, rubbing his eyes.

“Just-” Mark turned to Yukhei as the elder hesitated, inhaling sharply before tilting his head and continuing, “learn to stop staring?”

Mark laughed brightly, his shoulders easing slightly and he nodded. “I might just try that.”

✁---

Mark couldn’t stand the blast of the air conditioning that plagued the entirety of the school.

He tugged his arms tighter across his chest, pulling away from the frigid metal of his desk chair. It was bad enough that the temperature outdoors was steadily dropping with the approach of the wintry air, the least the school could do was turn the cooling that had accompanied the late summer heat off. Instead, Mark was left in a constant state of frigidity.

He supposed the benefit of the cold was how it stole the drowse from him. With constant shivers that wracked his goose bump laden skin, his eyes stopped their persistent droop. It was practically impossible to take his mind off anything _besides_ the way his skin searched for solace in warmth.

There was no such warmth around.

He slumped further in his seat, his back scraping across the plastic of the chair as his spine curved uncomfortably. The school day had barely begun, he was seated in his second class with the teacher yet to even have arrived, and still he was glaring at the analog clock as if expected the minute hand to whirl with a sudden speed. It didn’t.

Mark curled his fingers over the flesh of bicep, wincing at the cold of each appendage that brushed him. He cursed his seat having been just below the air vent. He cursed himself for not thinking forward and bringing a jacket.

The minute hand continued to crawl alongside the thin red stripe of seconds that swung in circles.

Mark jumped at the smack beside him and he tore his eyes away from where they scrutinized the clock. Donghyuck dropped his textbook onto the wood of the desk and settled into the seat beside Mark’s. He winced at the clink of the boy’s backpack zipper against the metal chair leg as it resounded cuttingly through the silent class room. Donghyuck shot him a grin.

Mark dashed his eyes away from the boy, settling them once more on the agonizing clock. He didn’t think the hand had moved at all.

It was a bit strange, to Mark, how Donghyuck’s body seemed to immediately emanate warmth into Mark. His left side seemed to suddenly lose its chill with the boy’s body heat beside him, the goose pimples that’d wracked him receding to normal. Donghyuck was warm – he expelled a light and heat no matter the temperature or room – and Mark was rather jealous he couldn’t harness such heat.

With the soft brush of skin against his own – skin that felt no different than his, no more special – a blazing trail of heat flooded from his upper arm through to his ears. His toes curled in his runners with the strange sensation of heat that flooded him, though it seemed a sensation he needed to grow accustomed with its sudden frequency, and he felt his fingers twitch alongside them. He worked to ignore the flush of heat behind his ears, in the crook of his elbow, and in the pit of his stomach.

“I heard you decided to stare – again?” Donghyuck grinned and Mark avoided his eye.

“Allegedly.”

Donghyuck snorted. “And you’re a bit… judgmental of Jeno and Jaemin.”

Mark started, turning to Donghyuck’s mirthful expression suddenly. “No, I’m not.”

Donghyuck raised his brow and Mark took the moment to study him briefly. His hair hung limply over his forehead, the roots growing dark and drastic against the coppery shade it’d been lightened to, and his face was bare. Mark found himself studying the boy’s eyelashes. They were thick despite their short length and he remembered how they’d looked with the dark paint of mascara they’d been coated with the weekend prior.

“That’s not what I was told,” Mark blinked out of his trance and met Donghyuck’s eye, remaining silent a moment. He sighed.

Mark didn’t know how he’d ended up enraptured by the being that was Donghyuck. And more so, Mark didn’t know how to get himself out. He was unsure about the picture his friends had painted of him, whether Jaemin had sculpted a being focused on humiliation and disgust, and he was unsure how to approach whatever opinion Donghyuck had molded Mark to fit. Donghyuck was already bound to find Mark distasteful, and in protection of himself Mark needed to convince himself that the boy beside him was far less mesmerizing than he appeared.

It was a goal built impossible.

“Do you often talk about me with your friends?”

“Do you often stare at people?” Donghyuck arched a brow and grinned. Mark screwed his lips to the side in contemplation, twisting his cold hands together anxiously. He settled with tucking them below his thighs, warming them underneath.

“Do you ever think-”

“Oh, constantly.”

“Shut the hell up.”

Donghyuck snorted, nodding his head to urge Mark to continue speaking once more. The elder hesitated, his lips resuming their twist. Mark felt himself flush as the boy’s eyes followed the movement and he pulled them into a straight line once more, insecurity plaguing him with the other’s attention.

“Do you ever think – stop trying to make that joke twice – like _really_ hard and just like… y’know, zone out?” Mark watched Donghyuck’s lips pull away into a grin, his mouth parting slightly to release a soft laugh.

“I guess?” he cocked an eyebrow as he spoke. “I mean, I usually try to avoid staring directly at people while I do that,” Donghyuck bit his bottom lip to tame the grin that threatened to split his face and Mark forced himself to remain looking away, his stomach clenching in a weird sort of anticipation toward the conversation.

“Sorry.”

“Oh?” Donghyuck urged, “Why’s that?”

Mark shrugged, pulling his hands from below him and tracing a pointer finger across the lines of his jeans ingrained there. They lost their warmth slowly. “It’s rude to stare.”

“I think it’s rather funny,” Donghyuck’s nasally voice was lowered with mirth and Mark swallowed the bile that rose into his throat with a croak. “They tend to assume the worst, anyway – Jaemin and Jeno, I mean.”

Mark hummed in confusion toward Donghyuck and the boy shrugged in response, tilting his head to further survey his face. Mark felt his gaze like fingertips over his skin, pulling at his lips and sending scorching trails of heat that kissed him in violent caresses. He scrunched his cheek against the itch and looked away.

“You’re just a bit strange, Mark.”

“Is that supposed to hurt,” he snorted and Donghyuck shook his head with a soft smile.

“No, it’s just what I think.”

“I think you’d find that my mind is pretty simple.”

“So, why do you stare then? If you’re not strange then what is it you think about?” Donghyuck arched his brow and Mark hesitated, glancing over the boy’s curious expression. Mark schooled his face to appear bemused, thoughtful toward formulating an answer.

“It’s not so complicated as that. I just stare and think simultaneously.”

“And that doesn’t make you strange?” Donghyuck laughed as he finished. Mark answered with a shrug and Donghyuck grinned. Mark suppressed the way the image of his heart lips made his chest tickle like the stroke of a feather. “So then, what were you thinking of when you stared at me?”

Mark’s eyes widened and he darted his gaze away, swallowing harshly as his chest leapt anxiously. He shrugged, studying the swirling grains of wood imbedded in the desk.

“Probably your hair, I don’t really remember.”

Donghyuck hummed, his lips pulled in a smirk as he watched Mark fidget beside him. Mark wanted to scream.

“Oh?”

He groaned before speaking, “Don’t laugh at me.”

“Where did I laugh?” Donghyuck’s voice was shrill in mock offense as he defended himself, a soft giggle causing his words to waver softly.

“Maybe your head.”

“Maybe in my head?” Donghyuck repeated and barked a laugh before sobering quickly, gently covering his bright grin with a palm. Mark rolled his eyes and turned to the door, wishing the teacher would appear to save him more embarrassment. The world didn’t exactly listen to him often.

“I’ll kill you,” he grumbled petulantly.

“How comforting.”

“Do you think if I switch seats he’d notice?” Mark nodded his head to the desk of the teacher as it remained unoccupied, the bell still not having rung in interruption to Donghyuck. The boy in question hummed in mock contemplation.

“I’ll move with you so he doesn’t notice.”

Mark squinted an eye to the younger and Donghyuck grinned, his top row of teeth visible. “I think you’re missing my point.”

“Go ahead and rip my heart out, Mark.”

“I’ll hit you – quit grabbing my arm.”

“I think it’s worth it, you don’t seem strong enough for it to hurt.”

Mark balked and Donghyuck guffawed, tipping his head back slightly with the effort. His hair spilled gently over the tips of his ears and Mark watched where it stroked the nape of his neck. Mark wondered if it’d be soft to touch despite the way the ends seemed to split with damage.

“So, I should tell Jaemin you’re not disgusted by him and Jeno?”

“I don’t even know them; it wouldn’t be my place even if I _did_ have a problem with them – which, _again_ , I don’t.” Donghyuck hummed.

“What a shame.”

“Huh?”

“That you don’t even know them – which, by the way, why _were_ you staring? Or was it a simultaneous thinking and staring but with no connection?” Donghyuck snorted at his own words and Mark rolled his eyes.

“I was actually…” he hesitated, swallowing before shrugging with a practiced ease, “wondering where you’d disappeared to…”

Donghyuck brows rose in just the slightest and Mark forced himself to hold his eye. His lips curled upward in a smile and Mark forced a grin onto his own face to match the boy’s. The bell blared overhead and Donghyuck leaned back into his seat. He slanted his eyes to match Mark’s stare as he faced forward.

“Careful, I’m starting to think you’re beginning to care more about me than just my hair color. Am I wrong, Mark?”

Mark kept his mouth shut.

✁---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yawn, the next chap is my fav writing so far so hang in there please o_0


	3. rings of stone and bracelets of silver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mark's a little bit.. conflicted...
> 
> a little bit..

✁---

The ticking of the clock did little to dull Mark’s thoughts.

It was a few minutes past two a.m., and Mark should’ve long since fallen asleep in the comforts of his heavy duvet. Instead, he laid across the bundle of cotton sheets to give in to a sleepless night, his fitful rest having fleeted his grasps to resolve into a state of full blown consciousness as he stared with blurred vision to the sticky stars that silhouetted against his ceiling.

The stars had long since lost their glow and remained there to hang limp and dim in the blue of night. He’d hung them as a child alongside his brother – two figures of stunted limbs and stubby fingers stretching for the ceiling, teetering on a latter that wobbled and gasping in joy with the dangers that licked their bare toes as they fell. The stars were random in their placement over the smooth ceiling.

Mark wondered if it was worth it to pull them down.

Mark wondered if stealing away the rest of their reminiscent glow would steal with it the conflicts that licked his mind.

It was the patter of rainfall that brought Mark from his memories. He could feel a strange qualm heighten in his chest with each splatter of drops against his window – the ruminations of his mind that stole through him in the restless air ebbing to and fro over his conscious, never staying to allow him to ponder their use and instead leaving him breathless in their wake. He let them wash and crash over his head, never pulling at the surface and instead leaving himself to sink below their riptide.

He felt constantly cold.

The weight of blankets that enshrouded him weighed his posture down, each sheet crisp and cool against his skin and every tug to pull them tighter, closer, around him went futile in his search for warmth. The brisk temperature that hung over the room seemed to stem from inside the blankets, inside Mark, and he gave up trying to combat the cold.

Mark longed for the warmth of golden skin. He longed for the bejeweled and lanky fingers to caress warmth across his limbs and scrape heat across his chest – to burn each touch into the curvatures of his bones. Each ring of stone and bracelet of silver seemed carved for the boy of gold and Mark longed to slip them off his wrists in an agonizing kiss of cold metal over honeyed skin. Mark longed to replace them over his own skin – to hold the mark of the boy on his own wrists. He longed for the press of metal against him.

It was odd to Mark, how suddenly his thoughts had begun to increase from the innocent interest in a boy whose world was so different from his – was everything Mark wished and both feared his own could be – to a full blown intoxication with the younger’s existence. It was odd how every thought that washed over him brought him back to the darkened gaze of the boy – of the way it rested over his lips. He lifted a finger to trace the burn.

Every thought of Donghyuck left him writhing; he was a fish out of water with a sentence for death.

Donghyuck was a tease.

And Mark hated how his thoughts supplied that Donghyuck left him easily – that the boy would continue to climb and blossom while Mark grew thinner and withered. Donghyuck was a world of things that Mark was not – he was a boy who feared no judgement and needed no validation – and Mark knew he wouldn’t stick around for him. Donghyuck would inevitably brush him off his lap like a mere crumb.

Mark lived in a world of silence and fascination – he was built on a fear for others and an internal judgment toward himself. And every little interest Donghyuck bestowed over him was simply the curiosity of discovering someone so unlike himself. And once Donghyuck wrecked Mark – once he discovered what all the silence was _for_ – he’d be gone once more in a swirl self-assuredness and reckless adolescence.

Mark thought the Donghyuck of his mind cruel.

Mark thought he enjoyed the cave of self-loathing and secrecy he’d built for himself.

With Donghyuck came a sudden relinquishing of Mark’s protection, a sudden burst of his shell. He filled him with a sense of comfort at all the wrong things, all the things he’s assured himself as bad. And with Donghyuck came a sudden change in Mark’s truth, the sudden judgment of Mark’s friends.

Mark had spent the entirety of his longest friendships in a battle against a truth he’d long since protected – a truth he had no problem with for others, but for himself was impossible. And Donghyuck revealed such truth with the effortless stroke of a butterfly’s wings that left the torrential rains of summer monsoon flooding in as judgment and distrust.

Donghyuck’s world was open and daring – and Mark’s was closed and fearful.

And with Donghyuck, Mark had to step away from his world.

Mark trailed his palms over his forearms in a soft caress that left his stomach twisting. Donghyuck’s skin felt no different than Mark’s. And Mark couldn’t even touch his – couldn’t stand the feel of his skin against itself with its similarity to the brush of Donghyuck against him whilst knowing he remained alone.

He longed for Donghyuck’s hands against him, pinching warmth into his veins and springing bruises to throb with the heat of his pulse.

Mark felt a shiver run through him.

The steady drip of rain over his window pulled him below the grasps of sleep.

✁---

Mark found himself in tunnel.

There was no one around and the only noise was the deafening echo of dripping water as it splashed across the wet floor. The air was brisk but the distinct musk of mold and damp hung limp over him with a strangely suffocating staleness. The all-consuming darkness explained the emptiness as Mark realized he could barely see the hands that lay lamely at his side.

The hollow of the tunnel pushed his footsteps to reverberate in an obnoxious echo, the heels of his shoes clanking over the cement. Mark fumbled with his pocket in search of his phone, of a flashlight, but found none. He couldn’t bring himself to mind – the smothering darkness settled his bones with a strange comfort.

Mark was afraid of the light that would reveal his truths.

He began to walk across the curved floor of the tunnel, his ankles twisting slightly with the slight incline of the walls around him. He could run his hands along the cold, wet walls that ran alongside him, laden with piping, tracing their curve and slope as they encircled him in the seemingly endless tunnel of black. He tripped occasionally with the cracks and shifts of the cement structure. Mark continued his slow pace until he saw a speck of light.

He walked forward, his pace no more hurried than it had been but his heart speeding with introduction of a different world – of a bright light. The small blink of light grew more so as he ventured nearer, the rounding of the tunnel cutting in a clear end illuminated by the light. Mark halted beside the opened expanse.

A boy, the same height as Mark’s own self and with a face slightly rounder and seemingly younger, held a flashlight to Mark’s pipeline. The giggle that resounded from the boy and into the echo of the tunnel was sickeningly familiar with its saccharine twinkle like a brush of wind against chimes.

Mark’s hand itched to reach forward.

The boy that stood before him seemed to be an embodiment of sunshine. His hair was pale and shone against the light that refracted from his flashlight and over puddles in the dark – flirtatious in its shade that reflected the tangerines that grew plump over trees. His skin dripped with amber nectar and the yellowing light of his lantern pooled over him in glints of bronze. He was an embodiment of the sunshine and the world that Mark feared.

And Mark was the embodiment of darkness in the dampened blue of the tunnel.

“Is the tunnel a long walk?” the timbre of Donghyuck’s voice was soft and Mark thought even that appeared the opposite of his world.

“I found it nice.”

“You can’t be with me now,” Mark heard the boy say and the statement left an unspoken question to hang in the expanse between them. A few beats of silence passed and Mark felt his body take a small step backward. The flashlight seemed to blaze brighter.

It was strange how at once the concept that made him fear, that sickened him to an extent of pain, had then begun to fill him with a sense of comfort and belonging. Donghyuck was a person of unpredictable spontaneity and light and he made Mark want to leave his world of darkness and quiet behind. In that moment Mark would brave the horrible relief of truth for the touch of Donghyuck’s rings against his skin – of his lust in trails of pinches over his limbs.

“You can’t be with me in your world.”

Mark could feel himself nearly lose his footing but he had no control over his body to prevent the buckling of his knees. He’d begun to take on an omniscient sort of view as he looked down on a body that seemed unfamiliar to Mark. He couldn’t control his words and had no say over his body; he was simply watching Donghyuck’s words unfold around him.

“You need to overcome your fear.”

Mark’s heart raced and the tunnel seemed to expand around him like a dolly zoom.

“Can’t you see that’s what we both want – to be together.”

Mark watched himself with a dizzied head. A strange and misplaced scent drifted to him – he was waking up.

“You have to overcome your fear.”

Mark watched as the unfamiliar frame he knew to be his own stepped forward, into the stream of yellowed light from the lantern Donghyuck clutched in his hand.

Dream Mark reached a hand forward.

Donghyuck grasped it.

✁---

Mark woke with his fingers clenched tight, crescent moons carved into the pad of his hand. His hand was cold and there was no golden skin to clasp him and warm it – there were no rings or bracelets of a familiar boy to make it appear any less lonely.

✁---

Mark needed an explanation. Maybe it would be something existential – that he held no miniscule ounce of free will, that every action and situation he’d ever found himself in had been written in fate and forced by his desires. Or maybe Mark’s life; and the decisions he made, the paths he chose; were just unfortunate.

He knew it to be the latter – that every action he took was an unwise pick from an unwise boy, a child, and that if he held any small bit of honesty, even a size insignificant to many, within him his life would slide by with a drastic difference. Mark didn’t think of life as a fine line nor did all roads lead to a final point – Mark just took all the wrong turns.

He itched his forearm, his head whirling with the surroundings that he’d found himself in. The girl in front of him was pretty – her figure all straight edges and clean cuts and glossed lips – and Mark found the thought of her made bile rise to his throat that left him in a succession of hurried swallows to suppress the all-consuming urge to hurl. He wanted to claw at his throat until there was nothing left to be sick with.

Mark didn’t want straight edges and clean cuts and glossed lips.

Mark wanted smooth curves and fly away hairs and golden skin. Mark wanted rings of stone and bracelets of silver.

The skin of his arm had grown red in irritation, bumps having risen in a rash to curb away the onslaught of slight cuts that his jagged, bitten nails left. Each scrape left his skin burning in a scream for relief – itching to be scratched more but hurting with each slice of his fingernails. It was toxicity that Mark had found himself familiar – a yearning that only heightened the pain.

Mark’s skin was left raw. He felt bugs burrowed below each inch of him and in each corner and crevice of his body. He felt disgusting and sickening – his skin crawled with discomfort at the dimming light of the expectant glow that had seized her eyes. It repulsed him. She repulsed him.

And it was in no way a disgust directed on her character – Mark was nearly positive she wasn’t the bad person in the situation. It was the utter emotion that swarmed through the wet of her eyes, the hunger, the _need_ , and he found the thievery of such emotion revolting. He’d only ever seen them in the dark eyes of a boy, and they only ever belonged there.

He’d met her once, had considered liking her once. He’d been a transfer in to her class and she was the prestigious student that introduced herself. It had been a time of denial and increased desire – a time when the feelings that stirred in his gut had been suppressed to convince him they were for what was _right_ , what was accepted. He’d met her once, and he’d wrongly convinced himself that he liked her and not the boy that smiled from beside her.

Nothing had come of it then; he hadn’t expected anything to come of it ever. She and her seatmate had been rather intimate on various occasions and Mark had written it off that they were involved – no, that _she_ was involved… because she was what mattered. And thus, Mark had forgotten her existence.

Such was to be expected that, when she approached him, he’d been rather taken aback. And then he’d been rather perturbed. Now he just felt ill.

Mark wanted to believe that he didn’t understand why his emotions were besting him in such a way of discomfort, that he didn’t know what caused his mind such turmoil as she who stood before him did. But, in a way that caused Mark spite and grievance, it was rather immediate that an explanation was supplied.

The girl before him, with her long hair and ivory skin, was not who he wanted. Mark wanted her to be a boy he’d sat beside the entirety of the year but only truly just met. He wanted her to have rough hands and bulky jewelry and smudgy makeup. He wanted her to be the mess that was Donghyuck, but instead she was the cleanliness that was Mina.

And the thought nauseated him.

He felt _wrong_ , but he knew he wasn’t.

Mark had long since accepted that the things he’d thought were wrong, the emotions that ran rampant and uncontrollable in him, weren’t. Mark had accepted how he felt and who he was. But he hadn’t accepted it to the extent of honesty. And now, with the girl standing expectantly and in a slowly shrinking manor, he couldn’t help the disgust toward himself.

Mark wasn’t prepared to turn someone down; he didn’t have his truths in line.

And Mark didn’t know what to do.

The truth was Mark found the feelings Donghyuck stirred in him horrible. The comfort that the boy spread through him with his company was the breaking of his walls – and it would be the revelation of his lies. It would be the cause of his downfall. The emotions that were widely known to be _wonderful_ felt like a death sentence hanging over him. Butterflies in his stomach had turned to hornets and with each interaction he felt he wanted to rip his stomach from within him. Where there should’ve been butterflies then, when he should’ve felt solely flattered by her confession, there was only the thick press of vomit as it threatened to rise with the bile that slicked up his throat like the clog of hair in a drain.

Where someone would normally feel something akin to pleasure with another’s confession, Mark felt only annoyance to himself. He couldn’t preen and send her a small apology that _he_ would _, he just didn’t feel the same way_ because, the truth was, Mark wouldn’t. Mark couldn’t.

Mark clenched his hand into a fist and removed it from its assault against the skin of his arm. The burning itch there hadn’t dissipated; it’d only grown worse still. The jolting of his stomach and the apprehension in his mind joined its ascent to unbearable. The greater Mark’s feelings grew the worse his pain became.

Mark stepped back and met Mina’s eye. He saw there an expression that had fallen to something akin almost to pity – directed toward his clear apprehension or whatever let down she felt within herself, he was unsure. She had long since stopped hoping, wanting, that he’d answer her with a mutual feeling. Where there had been trust, there was only disappointment.

“I’m sorry.”

And Mark turned, forcing his legs into a hurried sprint that carried him as far from the girl, and as far from the truth, as he could.

Mark wondered if he should’ve been running the opposite direction.

✁---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright so, bare with me:
> 
> this chapter was largely me trying to expand my writing style a bit, so it's very... wordy ? I understand if it's confusing so let me try and communicate /my/ thoughts on how mark feels in case it's unclear (obviously you can take it how you want because interpretation is up to the reader).
> 
> basically, mark is aware that donghyuck makes him comfortable and he acknowledges that he likes him, but it's all very scary to him. he's scared of the truth getting out, he's scared of donghyuck's emotions, and he's scared of his own. so, i'm sorry if that wasn't clear or was really repetitive and confusing, i'm just trying to expand my writing and I need practice..
> 
> feel free to critique and ask questions since this fic has largely become me wanting to become a better writer!
> 
> much love,  
> emily <3


	4. sweat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "what're you scared of?"

✁---

“How do _you_ suggest I solve the equation then?”

Mark slanted an eye to his left, surveying the perturbed look over Donghyuck’s face. He lifted his brows and glanced to the paper with a forced swallow.

The boy was slouched over a worksheet, one that Mark had discovered wasn’t for this class but, to Donghyuck’s disdain, was homework he’d forgotten was due in his next period. His hair was rumpled and fell over his eyes as he leaned over the desk, his hands bunched where they rested beside the paper and twitched in agitation.

“I swear this is how she taught it to us but it’s not checking right.”

Mark was in no way the best at pre-calculus, but he’d managed to round his sophomore year out with a B in the class – though it was still the one grade that stripped him of his summa cum laude distinction. Still, glancing over Donghyuck’s page, he couldn’t curb the fear that if he tried to help the boy and he was somehow _wrong_ he’d face a painful judgment. Mark shallowed his nervous breathing.

“It’s linear speed: you’re finding arc length over the amount of time so…” Mark read the equation on Donghyuck’s page, “if each revolution is two pi and the radius is six inches, do six times two pi divided by sixty seconds. And then what’s that?”

Donghyuck scribbled over the sheet, the small blank section for the answer worn thin with the repeated erasing, and Mark watched him with a keen eye. Regardless of whatever pain twisted Mark’s gut in accompaniment with how he felt, Donghyuck never ceased to make him fond. The boy was a fit of sunshine captured and stuffed inside his body; he was filled with an endless bout of surprises and personality. Today Donghyuck had been whiny. Yesterday he’d been poisonous. Tomorrow he’d be something new.

Mark thought of his dream – of the boy’s words as he approached him from the tunnel. Dream Donghyuck was honest while Mark was a liar. Mark wasn’t sure Dream Donghyuck had any connection with the boy before him, and Mark wasn’t sure if either was a reality he wanted to face. He couldn’t stand the thought of being left, of Donghyuck’s curiosity being just that, but he was scared of what he’d face if the boy’s words rang true.

Mark wasn’t sure he _could_ leave his world.

Donghyuck was a wolf in sheep’s skin, swapping out his persona depending on the day, and Mark liked to watch as he shed the silken threads that tied him together to reveal a characteristic he’d yet to discover. The reveal of each untouched trait, each new mannerism and peculiarity to the boy, was beguiling. Donghyuck stripped himself of his walls as one rids themselves of clothing.

Mark wanted to strip him with his own hands.

Mark wanted to lay Donghyuck completely bare.

Donghyuck was a clementine Mark wanted to peel, scraping away the rind to find the gift of fruit below. The boy held so much life, so much of himself, within the husk he hid behind that Mark wanted to engorge _himself_ on it. He was _ravenous_ for the parts of Donghyuck no one else saw.

As much as Mark could pretend to others that he wasn’t fully and completely enraptured by Donghyuck, he wouldn’t lie to himself. The boy owned his mind and soul in ways that sparked an inconsolable fear in him that he wouldn’t dare to touch.

The pain he felt became almost pleasurable in Donghyuck’s wake – the fear of his truth insignificant.

It was ruinous.

The boy gasped and turned to Mark with a wide grin, his teeth tearing into his bottom lip. He pointed an index to the answer on the page. “You’re my savior – it’s right.”

Mark could pretend he didn’t know but he was sure he couldn’t lie to Donghyuck either.

✁---

Donghyuck looked like sin.

His bronzed skin was dark in the cover of the dim light, the hazy air of the room obscuring him slightly and heightening the strange air of _desire_ that hung over him. The hair of his temple was slick with sweat and it was pasted stark against his skin. Mark swallowed against the scratch of his throat as he watched the slow assault of the boy against his right mind.

The boy’s cheeks were flushed dark with the languid twist of his hips, the heat of bodies surrounding him radiating a blistering warmth and Mark watched as it infiltrated the boy and coated him in a sheen of sweat. Donghyuck sparkled like diamonds.

Donghyuck looked like lust and passion and he felt like heartache.

Mark didn’t bother to look away, the cover of swaying bodies and interlocked mouths and dimmed lights shrouding his glossy gaze that pointed to the boy. Donghyuck moved hands across bodies and his body across hands with an undeniable air of _want_ and Mark felt it pang through his chest.

Envy.

Donghyuck was wanting.

And Mark was starving.

Smoke swirled around him and the repulsive stink of liquor and throw up seemed to cling to each body that shoved past him. Mark stared – he stared to the glitter of Donghyuck’s eyeshadow that somehow seemed to visibly sparkle despite the distance they held. He stared to the flex of Donghyuck’s velvet jacket as he twisted in the grasp of a boy, as he curled in the grasp of a girl. He stared to the gloss of his mouth as his tongue darted across it in pursuit of hydration.

Mark stared until the envy and pain in his gut had intermingled with the weight of alcohol and nausea took over from jealousy.

Mark chased his thoughts with shots and his shots with beer.

In a way the lack of attention Mark received from the younger was good. Without the dark of Donghyuck’s eyes sparking nerves and excruciating emotion to stir his gut Mark felt less apprehensive. If Donghyuck was focused on others, if Donghyuck forgot Mark’s existence, Mark didn’t have to tell any truths.

Mark couldn’t help how the thought of Donghyuck’s lack of interest made him spiteful to the hands that grasped him, the hands that weren’t his.

Mark wondered if it’d be more worth it to out himself if only to never lose Donghyuck.

Mark wondered why he was thinking such.

The air was heavy around him and he swallowed thickly in an effort to breathe. Mark could feel the sweat cling to the small of his back as he leaned against the wall, the heat around him thickening further with a strange sense of humidity. His hand was jittery as he clasped the cup in it, the tremors spilling the topped off beverage slightly in a dribble down its side. It slicked his fingers.

He continued to watch the boy from across the room, his eyes glazed with intoxication and jealousy. Donghyuck's feet had begun to lift from the ground with the rapid tempo of the music that shouted into Mark's ears and he watched as the sensual swing of his hips dissolved into the fast pumping of his arms.

He was awfully pretty.

And Mark felt awfully small.

He was used to the butterflies - no tornados - that swung through his gut in the boy's presence, but he wasn't used to the utter burn of his aching chest that accompanied Donghyuck's dance.

Mark supposed maybe he was disappointing.

While Donghyuck moved his hips with a fluid grace of sexuality and lust, Mark stood against the wall. While Donghyuck breathed into strangers' ears and pushed against strangers' bodies, Mark pined from afar.

But Mark was scared, he knew that - and maybe Donghyuck knew that too. Mark wasn't sure if he hoped he did or not.

So instead, Mark imagined it was him alongside the boy who reeked of confidence. He stole glances to the boy's wandering hands and placed his own there in hope that it might feel the same. He watching the snagging of the boy's rings against clothes and pulled his own where they'd marred. He imagined so that, in turn, he didn't long to feel. But Mark was only making it worse.

His own hands had no affect where they grazed - they felt similar, and maybe in the dark light they even _looked_ similar, but they weren't _Donghyuck's_. They weren't warm and they didn't send shivers to crawl like spiders up his spine. They just made Mark want to grasp the real ones.

The air had grown uncomfortably thick and Mark felt a cough bubble over in his throat. The smoke that swirled in clouds around him seemed to thicken with the tension written in his bones and he stepped away from the wall, swatting at the smoke that clouded around him with a palm and making his way to a spot where the air was less dense. He needed to be able to see Donghyuck.

His feet felt heavy as he shoved through the crowds, taking a swig of the substance he'd poured himself and pursing his lips at the feel of the burn carving through his throat like a set of nails. The taste was sour on his tongue.

Mark's stomach resumed its sickening churn with his movements and he laid a palm over his stomach, pressing in slightly to curb the feel of sick. Mark had never been one to drink much - he didn't like how it began to dull his senses - but he found the queasiness of alcohol seemed to replace the fear toward his emotions. Mark just wanted to feel relaxed again.

He was tired of fearing being found out and he was tired of lusting over the boy of gold shavings. He just wanted to stop hiding. Mark wondered if maybe the truth was worth that.

He flattened himself against a wall once more, sinking into its corner and away from the eyes of those familiar. Mark just wanted to watch in silence. A hand rested over the small of Donghyuck's back and Mark bore his eyes into each appendage where they lay. They were splayed across him and Mark watched as a taller boy used them to pull Donghyuck in. He stooped low and whispered into the curvature of his neck, his lips grazing skin as he addressed Donghyuck and Mark felt his stomach twist with his imagination.

Mark was having fun.

He was having fun.

He flicked his eyes away with a wince, a lump filling his throat and he began to breathe softly through his mouth to press the onslaught of nausea down. Mark didn't like that he couldn't help but wish for it to be him - that Donghyuck would twist with his words with an indecency not meant for the open expanse of a house party's living room. Mark finished his drink.

He didn't look back to the exchange, he knew better than to slaughter the little remains of wellbeing within him. Mark's walls would not collapse - his truth would not come out - because he couldn't handle the image of hands on a boy he'd never touched. He wouldn’t martyr himself because he believed Donghyuck should’ve been beside him. Because Donghyuck shouldn’t of – Mark had no right to be beside a boy so himself, so _Donghyuck_ , while Mark was so reserved.

While Mark was so full of lies.

Mark didn't like to drink - but that didn't mean he wouldn't so as to keep away the sadness instilled in his gut, the sadness he knew he'd had no right to even begin to feel when he'd done nothing to chase it away. Well, when he'd done nothing to chase it away except chase vodka with cola.

A body slumped against the wall beside Mark and he jumped, slanting his eyes to his left hastily and whipping his head around. The cup crinkled slightly where his hand tightened over it in shock and he felt grateful that he'd finished it as he jostled it. Enough alcohol had spilled over Mark's jittery hands already. He widened his eyes at the boy beside him. A familiar pair of half-mooned eyes and a wide smile stared back.

Jeno wore a pair of glasses, though they'd been pushed back to card through his hair like a headband, and his white shirt was nearly see-through with the sweat, or whatever other substance it was, that coated it. Mark darted his eyes over the boy's complexion.

Mark acknowledged that the boy was pretty, but he held nothing over the Donghyuck that danced out of vision and into his dreams. Donghyuck was the light of the sun and Jeno was the petal of a flower. He was quiet and kind, and when he spoke it seemed always to soothe or laugh, while Donghyuck was boisterous and spontaneous, speaking out of turn and with a flirtatious craze that sent Mark's mind whirring. Jeno couldn't blossom without Donghyuck's light.

To Mark, it appeared everyone needed Donghyuck yet no one had him. Mark wanted to have him.

Mark's heart beat slow and he shook his head to himself, his breaths shallow and soft. No matter his wants, Donghyuck was a thing unattainable. He was a fleeting glimpse of beauty and sunshine before he left you grasping. And Mark was a creature of lies and fear - he couldn't reach for what he wanted, he wouldn't. Because Mark feared his truth, he feared other's judgment, more than he wanted.

But he'd never met a Donghyuck before.

Donghyuck's clasps were a thing tangible, they wrapped his heart like dental floss and tugged until they sliced through the muscle with a piercing ache. Donghyuck's clasps were the lust he felt and the emotions he breathed. And Mark wasn't sure he could deny the stroke of the boy's copper dipped fingers against his walls any more than a paper thin wall and a gust of wind.

"So either you do have a problem like Jaemin thought or you're just interested in Donghyuck - like most of us, I suppose," Mark jumped back from his thoughts, clearing the blur of his vision and glancing back to Jeno.

"What?"

"I've been watching you stare at Donghyuck, Mark." Mark shook his head, his eyes wild with an unhinged fear directed toward the younger.

"Why?" Jeno shrugged, glancing behind Mark's shoulder to where he'd previously tracked Donghyuck with a steadied gaze. Mark refused to look still.

He could've laughed at the irony of Jeno's assessment - of Jeno’s studying of him as Mark had unintentionally done to the other in the days prior - had he not been filled with an untapped apprehension that wracked him with tremoring hands and scampering eyes. He could've laughed at the hilarity of being found out had it not drenched him in an anxiety that blackened the edges of his vision.

"Because, maybe not to others, but to me you were quite obvious." Mark kept his eyes steady over Jeno's expression, his brows furrowed together with fear as the boy continued to watch his friend. Mark felt his gut yearn to glance away - to track Donghyuck's path, the scorching trails of his hands, with his eyes once more. He didn't.

"Who are you going to tell?" Mark watched as Jeno's brows knit together and he turned to meet Mark's expectant gaze. Mark could feel a scoff build in his throat as the boy's eyes flooded with worry.

"Mark, I'm not going to tell anyone. Maybe Jaemin since he thinks you're an ass right now, but if it is... _that_... well then it's not my place to spread it." Mark shook his head. His frame was stiff where it was ridden with distrust and his eyes bore holes into Jeno’s. Jeno held his gaze with furrowed brows.

Mark’s heart pounded in his chest with the insistency of a clock’s ticking and he swallowed the bitterness in his throat.

“Mark, what’s wrong?”

Mark backed away slightly, his hand lifted to tug agitatedly at his earlobe. “You don’t know anything.”

Jeno tilted his head, watching Mark’s retreat unforgivingly. He stepped cautiously forward and Mark thought he looked a little more like a predator stalking its prey than that of a flower. Mark’s chest thundered, the floss that had wrapped around it straining and increasing the ever present pain from a dull roar to a blistering pierce.

“You know no one here will judge you? Me and Jaemin won’t judge you.”

Mark darted his eyes over the room, watching those around him with wariness. No one was focused on him but Mark felt like every eye, every ear, was directed toward Jeno’s words – his _accusations_.

“No one can know,” he whispered and Jeno’s mouth curled into a scowl.

“Donghyuck won’t judge you. Mark. Neither will we.”

“They can’t _know_ ,” Mark continued to back away. Jeno followed.

“Mark-”

“Jeno, I’m a liar. They can’t know,” his voice was hushed, his words curling to the other with the fragileness of a life built on self-consciousness and dishonesty, and Jeno’s eyes softened. Mark felt sick.

Mark wanted to be with Donghyuck. Mark thought Donghyuck was everything spectacular in a body tangible and loving. He was a summer’s day and a spontaneous adventure. And he was a light that Mark’s dark couldn’t chase away.

But Mark wasn’t it for Donghyuck.

“Then they won’t know, Mark. But there’s nothing wrong with you,” Mark opened his mouth and squeaked but Jeno continued to speak over him. “You’re not a liar – if you were the entirety of the world would be. You’re just keeping yourself safe.” Jeno shrugged as he spoke. “Though Mark, if you feel something – there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t leave yourself with regret and sole remembrance of what had been because, well… you were scared.”

Mark continued to back up. Jeno stopped following him. Their eyes remained clashing and Mark found himself become lost in the sea of bodies that crashed over the living room floor like the break of waves, pulling him in and suffocating him. He drowned in the limbs and choked on the mouths over his skin. Mark stumbled.

Jeno’s words confused him. He barely knew the boy and yet there he’d been working to comfort him. And besides, Mark had never had any choice _but_ to be left with regret and sole remembrance. Donghyuck came. And Donghyuck left. Nothing had changed except Mark’s feelings. With Donghyuck came a fleeting glimpse of what could be – of all he wanted to grasp – and with Donghyuck came the separation of such. Donghyuck was a boy that gave other’s a view of ecstasy and dreamlike craze – but kept all else to himself.

Donghyuck had never stayed for anyone.

And Mark didn’t know why Jeno suggested he might.

A hand steadied Mark’s trip and he glanced up. His arms froze where they clasped the bare forearm that had grabbed him and he stared with wide eyes to a boy not taller than himself. Donghyuck grinned until his eyes cut to slits and his nose scrunched.

“Is your life no longer disappointing?”

Mark cocked his head, his throat tight as he glanced toward where Jeno had stood. He couldn’t spot him through the mass of bodies that spun around him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, are you here to dance?” Donghyuck giggled and Mark watched as his pink tongue darted out to wet his lips. He left a soft gloss over them and they burned red in the dark, like the shine of a half-eaten cherry lollipop. Mark shook his head.

“No-”

“Why not?” Donghyuck pulled where his hand held Mark’s shoulder and he stumbled forward, the younger boy pulling him deeper into the swarming crowd. The smell of musk and alcohol grew stronger and Mark’s head pounded in discomfort.

Mark jumped slightly as Donghyuck stopped and grabbed him by the loose collar of his t-shirt, pulling Mark toward him and raising on his tiptoes. Mark noted how their noses aligned with Donghyuck’s raised height, their mouths mere breadths apart as their breathing intermingled heavily. Mark inhaled the pungent smell of liquor that melded with mint gum and mouthwash. It was pleasant, the stench of bodies around him collapsing away until he was shrouded in the stinging scent of Donghyuck. The icy mint on his breath seemed to plunge Mark’s overheated body in a sudden cold.

Mark’s head was muddled with fog and mist, his sanity just out of grasp as he swayed dizzily in Donghyuck’s grasp. The boy’s arms that crawled around his neck were warm. He couldn’t think, and Mark supposed he liked it.

Donghyuck seemed to have that effect on Mark, an effect he supposed he shouldn’t like and shouldn’t surround himself in – he made Mark forget the nerves that ebbed into him. Donghyuck made Mark forget the secrets he should have been keeping.

Mark let out a soft gasp as Donghyuck’s back arched and his stomach pushed harshly into Mark’s own. Donghyuck giggled. The soft hands that stroked the nape of his neck, fiddled with the overgrown hair there, felt warm against him. The cold metal of his rings were pressing into him with a contrasting temperature that sent trembles to shoot down his spine and into the wobble of his knees.

Mark was far beyond tipsy, his head was muddled and he feared that if he spoke it would hold no coherency at all, and he worked to sober his mindset – the drug of Donghyuck and the alcohol mixing dangerously in his stomach.

It was the hand that ventured precariously too low, looping into his front belt loop and tugging Mark closer still, that snapped him from his muddled state.

Donghyuck was here, in front of Mark and _painfully too close_. And here _Mark_ was, crumpling indecently under his hands in an all too public place – he supposed he didn’t want Donghyuck to do that after all. Mark was horrifically obvious and Donghyuck was horrifically breaking his heart. Mark pushed away, the overwhelming scent of sweat flooding back into him. Donghyuck looked up, confusion marring his face and his hair mussed where Mark’s hands had unconsciously raked through it.

Mark couldn’t even remember what it had felt like.

And he hated himself for it – because he’d never get to touch it again.

Mark stumbled away, his hand to his head as it pulsated beneath the tips of his fingers, each throb shooting down his spine uncomfortably. He needed to get away from Donghyuck, get away from what felt like hundreds of mouths breathing down his neck and eyes staring into his temple. Mark needed to get away from the boy who seemed to hold all his secrets in clumsy hands, letting them slip from his grasp and fall to the floor in plain sight of all others.

Mark didn’t think Donghyuck knew they were secrets.

He burst onto the porch and bounded hastily down the steps, his feet lifting into a jog as he pushed distance between himself and the flashing lights of the living room. He heard feet smack the pavement behind him.

“Mark,” Donghyuck’s voice hadn’t lifted into a shout, but the high pitch of his tone was piercing and Mark’s feet halted abruptly. Donghyuck’s body slammed into him from behind. “What the hell?”

“Please leave me alone.”

Donghyuck stepped back as though Mark had lashed out, his brow furrowed in confusion. Mark shrunk into himself, his shoulders drawn in and his chin dipped to rest against his chest. He could feel Donghyuck continue to watch him. “What?”

Mark remained silent, his eyes trained to his feet like a child being scolded and his stomach twisted with vomit. Something vile crawled through his throat with the slink of a slug and he curled his toes in agony.

“Mark, what?”

“I can’t-” he swallowed, hesitating, “I can’t be around you, Donghyuck. It’s not good for me.”

Donghyuck scoffed. “What’s not good for you? Being seen with a boy? What the hell is wrong with that?”

“Donghyuck-”

“No, Mark, that makes me sick. What you said is making me sick. What difference does it make?” Mark slanted his eyes up to meet Donghyuck’s. It was the wrong decision. The confusion that had swirled in the irises of his eyes had melted away to a disgust marred anger. “I’m near _positive_ you don’t stare at me because you hate me. Is my makeup too feminine and it offends you? God, Mark, are you so confused why you’re attracted to me – it must be because I wear makeup – I look like a girl, right? Because you could never find a guy attractive, right?”

“No, Donghyuck-”

“Then what the _hell_ is your problem. Why the hell do I need to ‘get away from you’? And what could possibly be so disgusting about dancing with me that you shove me away?”

“I’m _scared_ , Donghyuck,” Mark gasped out, his voice warbled and heavy and Donghyuck narrowed his eyes in irritation.

“Of what?” his voice was a hiss, cold as it licked over Mark’s chest in its unsettling tone.

Mark wasn’t sure how to answer. What _was_ he scared of? He couldn’t stand the thought of not being with Donghyuck – that scared him. The conversation scared him. But, more so, Mark was scared of the truth. He was scared of his friends finding out he’d left them in the dark for years – lied about himself, lied about his feelings, lied about practically everything. Mark was scared of the feelings Donghyuck gave him, of the twisting of his gut and the feather-light fluttering of his chest. He was scared of the honesty he couldn’t help but give to Donghyuck. And Mark was scared of how none of those fears mattered when Donghyuck was touching him.

Mark was scared of everything.

Because Donghyuck was everything.

“Judgement, I don’t know,” Mark’s voice was soft and questioning as he mumbled, his eyes focused on the collarbone of the other. “Everything. You.”

Donghyuck snorted and shook his head, “No, see: if you were scared of _me_ , you wouldn’t run from me. You’d have stayed for fear that I’d have been mad if you left. No, Mark, you’re scared of yourself.”

Mark startled, his wide eyes snapping to Donghyuck’s. Donghyuck’s gaze was filled with disappointment and Mark could feel his chest dim with the emotion that spread through him. He swallowed harshly, his hands shaking with the torrent of butterflies in his stomach. Donghyuck continued to watch him.

“How?”

“How what? How are you scared of yourself?” Mark nodded, “You tell me. Why don’t you let yourself be honest with others? It’s not like you don’t know they’ll support you. And somewhere you have to know they’ll forgive you for not saying anything sooner. So why haven’t you told them?”

“Because I’m scared they won’t-”

“Mark, you know they’ll forgive you.”

“Because I’m scared that _I_ won’t forgive me,” he whispered.

“Mark, what do you need to forgive yourself _for_? What have you done _wrong_?”

Mark remained silent, glancing to where his hands fiddled with each other. Mark had to forgive himself for falling for someone who would leave – who wouldn’t care. And he’d have thrown it all to the wind – had revealed the things that he’d kept, the lies he’d told, the truths he’d feared – for nothing. Mark had to forgive himself for inevitably letting Donghyuck get away when Mark had ousted everything for him. And Mark feared he’d never forgive that.

“Why me?”

“What?” Donghyuck’s nose scrunched in confusion.

“Why’re you paying attention to me?”

Donghyuck’s brow ticked and anger flooded back into his gaze. He exhaled through his nose. “I’m not a fucking god, Mark. I’m allowed to have feelings for people. You act like I’m some unobtainable spirit that you can only lust after. I’m a fucking person, Mark.”

Mark swallowed and shook his head. “It’s just that-”

“It’s just nothing, Mark. I guess maybe it’d be better if I just didn’t have feelings – or at least not for someone who can’t even come to terms with his own.” Donghyuck stepped back and Mark felt his chest ache with the boy’s distance. “Figure it out on your own, I’m sick of being treated like someone without any emotion that leaves men high and dry with ‘desire’. Don’t treat me like some sort of man-eater. You’re the one leading _me_ on.”

Donghyuck turned and walked away.

And Mark couldn’t forgive himself for managing his worst fear.

Especially when he’d been the cause all along.

✁---


	5. and drizzle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and he was just like Mark

✁---

Mark stood outside a tall office building.

The walls of the building soared high above Mark and he craned his neck to trail his eyes to the top. Glass and metal glinted in the starlight of the heavy night, rain slicking its windows and trailing over its sides. Mark thought it looked something futuristic; windows and steel intermingling into its open layout that he was sure in daylight spilled natural lighting beautifully over the lobby.

A looming oak tree sat on the sidewalk beside its doors, its lone figure seeming grand with the flat of its surroundings. Mark thought it oddly placed; the large tree obstructive to passers-by that hurried over the sidewalk. Mark leant his hip against its massive trunk and glanced upward toward the sprawling length of its limbs.

Mark was hiding.

Mark supposed he’d become no stranger to hiding, but he found he’d been doing it quite a bit in the past week. He wasn’t hiding his emotions, nor was he protecting each lie he’d ever spewed. He’d confessed to Yukhei and Renjun – his heart had been pounding and the familiar feeling of nausea had overtaken him, sending him into a state of instinct – and their reactions had been rather dull.

Renjun had merely stated that he didn’t mind (he’d cracked a few jokes that sent peonies growing over Mark’s skin in a bright flush, but for the most part he’d been only kind) whilst Yukhei’s response had been the more dramatic, thoroughly sparking the two other’s curiosity.

 _I know_.

He’d ignored their insatiable inquiries in the days following.

With Donghyuck’s absence – and with the aftermath of Donghyuck’s anger – came the dawning of Mark’s realization. He’d grown accustomed to the boy’s warm smile and lighthearted conversation, and without it Mark felt numb. Mark didn’t think hiding his truth mattered when there was no Donghyuck to capture his attention – he didn’t think anything else was _relevant_ when Donghyuck had gotten away.

And Mark needed to forgive himself – he needed to find a way to make it all better.

Mark had built Donghyuck out to be something he wasn’t. He had obsessed over the boy to an extent that framed him as a god. Lee Donghyuck had become Mark’s entire world – he was a boy Mark had grown fascinated in beyond his own comprehension. He was his intoxication and his infatuation and he worshipped him. Lee Donghyuck was his escape in his world of lies – he was who Mark found he could not deny honesty and could not hold spite against. Donghyuck was Mark’s salvation.

But Donghyuck was only human.

Donghyuck was not heavenly mornings and blistering sunrises. Donghyuck was not unobtainable and fleeting. Donghyuck was not perfection and he was not invincible.

Donghyuck was himself – the many layers of him that there were – and he was just as breakable, just as human, as Mark’s own self.

Mark had made Donghyuck out to be a boy who left others in the fits of passions and was built off lust and desire. Mark had idolized him and yearned for him until he was something ungraspable, something inhuman and perfect. A possession to own that could never be reached. And he’d put a pressure on Donghyuck to fit the mold until the boy had cracked. Mark had made Donghyuck into a monster, into something cruel, when he was a boy younger even than himself.

And Mark was wrong.

Mark was hiding his body to watch. He’d stopped staring; he’d stopped seeing only what he wanted to see in exchange for watching the boy in every opportunity he could find. He watched Donghyuck until he was sure the other knew but refused to acknowledge. He watched Donghyuck until he could carve into rock the boy’s skin and bone – could morph a sculpture with each divot and bump of his body without looking – and give it the ability to dance with his mannerisms. Mark watched Donghyuck until the boy had ingrained himself into his brain with a personality so genuine Mark was sure he’d gotten to know it himself; not just watched it unfold to others.

Mark watched Donghyuck until the boy became something real and imperfect.

Mark watched Donghyuck and his every mistake – he saw each incorrect answer on the homework he completed beside him, he saw each awkward fidget when the teacher called on him, he saw each obnoxious bout of energy as he sat beside him friends. He saw the coloring of his cheeks when his laugh was just slightly too loud or his words slightly too intolerable. He saw until Donghyuck became a person similar to himself.

A person who wasn’t all honesty and perfection.

Mark watched until he realized Donghyuck’s actions weren’t all impulse and extroversion. He was simply a boy with no control over the world around him, doing his best to be himself in the most open way possible. He was just self-assured. Mark watched until he knew Donghyuck inside out. Donghyuck skipped school often, but it wasn’t because he was spontaneous or untouchable or mischievous

Donghyuck skipped school for the various appointments he attended at the building Mark stood before.

Donghyuck was just as imperfect as Mark.

And maybe he’d been just as scared.

The automated doors of the building parted and a body stepped into the drizzle of the darkened night. Its shoulders were hunched, head tucked low to stare toward the feet that stepped across the cobblestone pavement. Mark cleared his throat and stepped from where he rested against the tree.

The boy wore a black coat, the sleek fabric of the puffer jacket shining with the wet that framed the two. His hands were tucked into the jacket pockets to fend off the cold and the hood had been tugged over his hair, shielding his face from the rain and Mark’s eyes. They stood a rather vast distance from each other, Mark frozen of the sidewalk while the other remained just steps from the door to the building.

Donghyuck looked up.

His eyes were framed by the dark circles that rested below them, his skin bare and his bangs hanging limp over his forehead and into his eyes. He looked tired and confused.

He looked imperfect.

And Mark was sure that was better than perfect.

They said nothing, the silence hanging between them heavy and tangible like the stroke of fingers against each arm, each chest, and Mark let his eyes flick downward. He owed it to Donghyuck to say something, to _do_ something, first. Maybe he’d crawl to his knees and beg for mercy. Maybe he’d apologize, or explain, or _something_ more than this silence that hung between them.

Mark thought to his dreams, to the boy of sunshine and light that held a flashlight and told him to leave his world. The boy that had told him they wanted the same thing. Mark swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped forward, closer by a foot but still vastly far away.

Donghyuck continued to watch.

Mark unfurled his hand from where it’d been clenched at his side and lifted his eyes to meet Donghyuck’s gaze once more. He held it, standing still for a moment and letting the quietude of the night rest over them. With the drip of rainfall that resounded around them, the drizzle pounding into puddles in a clunk, Mark began to move.

His feet remained planted where he stood, his eyes still resting over Donghyuck’s, and he lifted a palm toward the younger boy. Donghyuck flicked his eyes toward the appendages and watched his unmoving hand.

They stood still for a moment, Mark’s arm tiring and Donghyuck’s eyes considering, as the rain continued to fall around them. Mark’s chest tightened and he clenched his jaw painfully to push away the sting in his eyes. He was being dumb. He’d hurt Donghyuck – he’d made the boy out to leave everyone behind when it was him who was continuously being left behind. Mark had left Donghyuck, the person whom he actually was, in favor of who he’d expected with prejudice. Why should he have forgiven him when he’d shown up and done so little as to say nothing.

Donghyuck moved.

He pulled his hand from where it’d rested in his jacket pocket and let it hang beside his body. He stepped forward and Mark’s chest hammered with the force of a drum, each step Donghyuck took panging through him.

“The least you could do is say something,” Donghyuck voice was tweedy with mirth and he cocked his head to the left. Mark fought the urge to cough against the lump in his throat.

Donghyuck lifted his wrist and fit his hand into Mark’s. It was warm despite the air that flitted around them and Mark flicked his eyes toward it.

Donghyuck didn’t wear any rings of stone or bracelets of silver.

His golden skin was bare and smooth and just like Mark’s own skin. He glanced up to meet Donghyuck’s gaze and found them to hold a similar hesitance to that of which he felt. Donghyuck was human and imperfect and nervous and just the same as Mark.

Mark tugged the boy’s wrist and pulled Donghyuck closer still.

Their mouths met in the middle.

✁---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, I have things to say..
> 
> first off, I hope that was at least a little satisfying - this ending was awfully hard to write because I'm kind of bad at summing and wrapping up emotions and I really didn't want this fic to end up dragging on and on (it was supposed to be a one shot, wth)... I tried to just explain what had happened to make him realize his emotions as opposed to having him go through it, so I'm sorry if that wasn't a very good ending,, aGH !
> 
> in this part, I didn't include what type of appointment Donghyuck goes to because I wanted it to be sort of ambiguous - it could've been a therapy session or doctor's office, it doesn't matter, I just wanted to show that he had flaws.
> 
> throughout this whole fic it is continuously brought up that Donghyuck and Mark's skin feels the same and that's because it was the only thing Mark could see that made them similar and in the end that became the proof that Donghyuck wasn't any better than Mark..
> 
> and finally, with the whole jewelry thing, in the ending he's not wearing any because the jewelry was supposed to represent how Mark thought the only way to be with Donghyuck was to be owned (think of them as like a collar, Mark mentions wanting to wear it in the third chapter) and once he's realized that they're equals he doesn't feel like that anymore so they're gone. it can be seen in other ways too but that's sort of /my/ impression as I wrote it ? 
> 
> that was my English report on my own writing, oops... aahaha
> 
> anyway, long story short, I hope you liked it o_0
> 
> love,  
> emily <3


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